How will doctors provide care for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the UK in future? Will they be hospital-based general physicians with a special interest in STIs participating in medical receiving or will they be in community settings overseeing multidisciplinary delivery of integrated sexual health? And what of HIV in-patient care? Will Genitourinary medicine (GUM) specialists continue to maintain responsibility for unwell patients? Or will GUM have disappeared having been absorbed into European Dermato-Venereology or dismantled by non-National Health Service care providers?

So far, GUM has an excellent record of keeping abreast with service redesign and external policy drivers. Postgraduate training is a key component of the specialty’s ability to do so. A major update of the GUM specialty training curriculum was published in 2010.1 This incorporated significant expansion of competencies in HIV medicine, reproductive health, public health and management/leadership.2 The GUM curriculum mirrors the current role of the specialty by ensuring that doctors gain all competencies required by existing health services. The …